Posted on 04/18/2009 4:13:11 PM PDT by Joiseydude
OAKLAND, Calif. — A westward dash to power electricity-hungry cities by cashing in on the desert's most abundant resource — sunshine — is clashing with efforts to protect the tiny pupfish and desert tortoise and stinginess over the region's rarest resource: water.
Water is the cooling agent for what traditionally has been the most cost-efficient type of large-scale solar plants. To some solar companies answering Washington's push for renewable energy on vast government lands, it's also an environmental thorn. The unusual collision pits natural resources protections against President Barack Obama's plans to produce more environmentally friendly energy.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Ray Charles could have seen this coming.
What, these environuts who have been stumping to cover the desert in solar panels only now tell us that these systems drink water like camels?
God love ‘em! This is my family. Own three homes. Love to golf (in the desert too!). Fly to all part of the globe. Buy every (only slight exageration!) green item, hybrid car. I know their ‘carbon footprint’ is 100x ours. And I wouldn’t care one whit, I would bless their hard work and good fortune, except that they think my husband and I are kooks for opposing the environmental movement. Not to mention the fact that this movement has been coopted by commies, anti-globalists etc.
Can’t build nuclear plants because of radiation phobia.
Can’t build coal or natural gas plants because of CO2.
Can’t build wind turbines because it chops the birdies up.
Can’t build dams because it hurts the fishies.
Can’t build solar because it hurts the tortoises.
I hope every neighboring state cuts their power lines to Kaliforniastan and lets them go dark.....
Oh let me see?? The enviromentalists want solar power but not where they have to live with it? Where the H*ll did they think it was going to be built?
Natural Gas will get you rich in power.
Yep, “environmentalists” object to clean burning of fossil fuels, nuclear power, windmills, solar panels, etc. When will people wise up and figure out that what “environmentalists” really oppose is a decent standard of living for the average person, and personal freedom?
The water isn’t destroyed.
What’s the problem with using water?
Why subsidize this is the libs are just going to fight it in court anyway?
The “environmentalists” have realized that solar power is on the verge of becoming cost effective. They can’t allow any source of energy to be readily available to the common person.
It isn't even close to being cost effective and isn't likely to become cost effective without the government driving the cost up (artificially BTW) of all of the alternatives. However, it should have been a no brainer that the environmentalists are not going to let Solar happen in any meaningful way.
Liberals are destroying the planet. They must be outlawed.
I hope I live long enough to see California tumble into the ocean.
Sue the environmental groups. Bankrupt them.
This is what Reagan did to the Soviets. It is a proven business model.
What’s the problem with using water?
A steam power plant must condense the steam back to water in order to operate. That means that you wind up dumping about half the heat that was input by solar, oil, natural gas, coal, or nuclear fission to boil the water in the first place. The condensation of the steam rejects the "heat of vaporization" to the cooling media. That can be river or lake water passing through a liquid to liquid heat exchanger, a cooling tower which evaporates the cooling water to reject heat, or an air to liquid heat exchanger (think car radiator) which rejects to the atmosphere.
The liquid liquid heat exchanger is the most efficient means and least costly IF you have a ready source of cold water to pass through the exchanger. The cooling tower is less efficient but uses less water but the water it "uses" winds up evaporated and is lost to the atmosphere. The air to liquid has never been used on large scale steam plants because it is by far the least efficient and the most costly to build and operate.
A steam power plant is a heat engine. It operates much like a hydroelectric plant. A dam backs up water to a higher level. The water is allowed to flow through a pipe to a lower level and is passed through a "water wheel" before it is released to the downstream side of the dam. The amount of energy you can extract from the spinning wheel is set by the difference in height of the water upstream of the dam and the height of the water downstream of the dam. The greater the difference the more energy you can extract. The only distinction between that and a heat engine is that instead of height you are considering differences in temperature. So that you can see the greater the temperature difference the more energy you can extract.
Another similarity is the need to dump some of the energy contained in the working fluid. The water leaving the water wheel still has kinetic energy so why not try to recover that too? You will find that as you attempt to do that it will decrease the overall flow of water. In the worst case it will totally block the flow downstream and the water wheel will stop turning and you can extract nothing at all. In a heat engine the best case thermal efficiency is equal to one minus the ratio of the low temperature sink divided by the steam temperature entering the turbine. Those temperatures are referenced to absolute zero. If you run the numbers you will find that you must expect to dump about half of the input power to the environment. You can heat a huge amounts of water by a few degrees, a smaller amount which is totally evaporated with less efficiency (a higher lowest temperature in the efficiency equation), or no water at all but with huge radiators trying to reject heat from the condensing steam to the already hot desert air (at still lower efficiency).
Them's your choices. By the way, most steam power plants are located along large bodies of water, it's not for the view!
Regards,
GtG
Ditto.
You are apparently unfamiliar with Nanosolar. The technology they have developed will make solar power cost effective, within the next few years.
However, there are still major problems with solar power. The biggest is that it can only be produced in the daytime. Another biggie is that producing lots of solar power will require lots of land.
Solar can never be a primary energy source, it can only be supplemental.
The point is that "environmentalists" don't want "clean" power sources, they want NO cost effective power sources. That's why they always make up problems whenever any of their idealized power sources starts to show some real promise.
I've been researching Nanosolar for sometime for work and it is pretty far from being useful in a major way for any kind of industrial use which I needed, FP&L just announced a 75MW plant for a Futuristic City in Florida called "Babcock Ranch". However, much of this stuff is being forced by government intervention not because it is economic or very efficient. I guess we will see how it turns out. The jobs created don't seem to be very substantial of long lasting. I think a study in Spain has found that this the case (2.2 jobs lost for every job gained and the jobs gained are short lasting See Study Here ) and they have been on this green power kick for some time now.
Their home turf is the courts.
Why would you want to do that?
“Their home turf is the courts.
Why would you want to do that?”
Because it costs money and it is putting them on the defensive. Once you fight back they are toast.
Liberals are like dogs who pee on your expensive carpet. However, if you smack them in the nose with a rolled up copy of National Review, they will whine a bit then go back under the porch.
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